


Gratitudes and Little Favors

by Sholio



Series: Robot Jack AU [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Food Poisoning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop, very worried robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is in the same universe as "Tin Soldiers," the future AU in which Jack is a robot. Now he's dealing with a sick human (<i>his</i> sick human). Shameless self-indulgent hurt/comfort for my h/c bingo "food poisoning" square.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gratitudes and Little Favors

For Daniel, working long hours without much down time usually meant grabbing food on the go, from various sidewalk vendors of questionable reputation.

Jack had a tendency to nag him about his diet: this had too much grease, that was past its expiration date, this had 0.05% more mercury than the federal standards ... Daniel was aware that to Jack, humans must seem impossibly fragile and short-lived. And it was flattering, on some deep-down level, that Jack had made it his personal mission in life to extend Daniel's lifespan as much as possible. It was also _fucking annoying_ , and he only responded with a roll of his eyes when Jack broke off and sampled the corner of the pita-wrapped mystery-meat something-or-other that Daniel had already eaten most of, and then reported, "You probably shouldn't have eaten that."

Daniel snorted and ate the last bite.

"It contains unhealthy bacterial content. Foodborne illness is a possibility." Jack scowled over his shoulder in the vendor's direction. "He should be shut down."

"It'll be fine," Daniel told him.

It wasn't fine.

His stomach started cramping halfway through the afternoon. He tried to ignore it as long as possible, mainly to avoid giving Jack the satisfaction of having been right.

"Are you unwell?" Jack asked him. "Your skin color is --"

"No," Daniel snapped back.

He toughed it out all afternoon, ignoring Jack's increasingly worried looks. By the time he got back to the apartment, he barely made it in the door before having to dash for the bathroom.

"I _knew_ you were sick," Jack said from the doorway, with a blend of smugness and worry that Daniel would have found amusing under other circumstances. "Your biological readings were _not_ normal. Do you --"

"Go away!" Daniel managed. He separated himself from the toilet long enough to slam the door.

Jack actually left him alone a lot longer than he was expecting. He wasn't entirely sure how much time went by, but it was awhile. When the bathroom door finally opened and Jack came in, very quietly and meekly, Daniel was sitting on the floor with his arm propped on the edge of the bathtub. He thought he might be done throwing up for awhile, but he wasn't going to lay odds on it.

Jack sat down, very quietly, on the floor just inside the door. Daniel had taken his silence at first for some sort of apology or guilt, but he realized, as he raised his head weakly to get a better look, that Jack was practically _radiating_ worry. He was actually scared out of his mind.

"I'm not dying," Daniel said wearily.

"That's what Peggy said," Jack said after a moment.

Daniel let his head flop down onto his arm. "You called Peggy. Of course you called Peggy."

"I thought I should ask for some advice before I broke down the door and took you to the hospital. Humans can be irrational when they're ill."

"Believe me," Daniel muttered, "you would've discovered a whole new definition of 'irrational' if you'd tried that."

"Peggy said this happens sometimes. It's not dangerous unless -- well, she told me some things to be alert for. And I consulted my stores of information on human behavior and illness, and my information agrees with what Peggy told me. I didn't even think of looking it up before. I don't know why."

Daniel did: because panicking robots weren't any more rational than panicking humans. He doubted if it would help to point that out, though. He should have thought about how Jack would react to this -- how an ordinary, if miserable, bout of illness might look from the outside, to someone who hadn't experienced a childhood with the usual rounds of stomach flu and other ailments -- but he'd had other things on his mind. "What did Peggy tell you?"

"To call for medical help if you pass out and I can't wake you up, or if you're running a high fever, or if you become delirious." Jack put out a hand and took Daniel's wrist in his warm, implacable grip. Daniel let him. "And you don't seem to be any of those things. Are you?" Still holding Daniel's limp wrist in his, he raised his eyes to Daniel's.

Daniel managed a weak smile. "No, I'm none of those things. I just feel like shit. I know you're reading my vital signs right now. What's it say?"

"Not within dangerous parameters for a human of your age and weight," Jack admitted. "Your body chemistry is unbalanced, however. Peggy said you should stay hydrated and suggested some over-the-counter drugs to help. I looked up a few things and ordered them. The delivery drone will be by soon."

Oh good, Jack was undoubtedly using Daniel's credit cards to pay for rush drone delivery on, probably, Tylenol and Pepto-Bismol. Still, he hadn't been fussed over when he was sick since he was a kid. As a grown-up, and a single one at that, getting sick just meant taking a day or two off work and lying around on the couch feeling like hell and watching movies. The idea of having someone worry about him and take care of him was oddly appealing.

Jack gave his wrist a little tug. "You should lie down."

"Okay," Daniel agreed, slumping against the wall.

"In a _bed,_ Sousa," Jack said, sounding more like his usual sarcastic self and less like he was clinging to an artificial calm by his fingernails.

"I don't think leaving the bathroom is a good idea."

"If you're sick again, I don't mind cleaning it up. I understand why humans feel disgust -- I mean, I have the programming to avoid dirty things, because no one wants a filthy Synthetic -- but I don't have the same visceral reaction you do." His smile was small and wry, but it wasn't bitter, not as it might once have been when he got onto this sort of topic. "Sympathetic nausea isn't something robots feel. So come on, lie down, before you fall asleep here."

Daniel flushed the toilet and allowed himself to be dragged floppily to his feet. He actually wasn't at all sure that Jack _didn't_ have a visceral reaction to dirty things; he'd noticed that Jack was fastidiously tidy with his own appearance. But ... well ... if Jack _wanted_ to ... He felt too awful to protest too much, and anyway, he was a little worried that getting vehement about anything right now would result in going another round with his rebelling stomach.

There were advantages to having a boyfriend who could bench-press a truck, one of which was that Jack could support him effortlessly with one arm while undressing him with the other. Daniel was shivering now, his body clammy with cold sweat. Stripped to his underwear, he let Jack sit him on the edge of the bed, and held himself up on shaky arms while watching Jack kneel and touch along the seam between his artificial leg and his living flesh. Jack's fingers stroked lightly against the unsealing tabs, and the leg's connections to Daniel's nervous system retracted; the "safe to remove" light turned green.

"I didn't know you knew how to do that."

"I've watched you." Jack set the leg in its recharging station -- again effortlessly; the leg was heavy and ungainly when it wasn't receiving the nerve signals that made it respond like an extension of Daniel's body, but Jack lifted it one-handed and dropped it into the charging station as if it weighed nothing. Then he turned back to Daniel, frowning; his hand brushed across Daniel's bare arm. "You're cold. Your body temperature is 1.4 degrees below normal. Lie down."

Daniel did, somewhat bemused. A soft ping from the building's security system, indicating the arrival of the delivery drone, saved him from being actually tucked in. He dragged a blanket over himself and rolled onto his side, with his arm tucked under his head on the pillow, to watch Jack open a window to retrieve the package. The size of it shouldn't have come as a surprise. Jack hadn't just ordered a bottle or two of painkillers; he'd ordered _all the drugs._

"So we're stocking a small field hospital now?" he asked as Jack took bottle after bottle out of the box.

"You might have been allergic, or it might not have worked -- How am I supposed to know these things?" Jack demanded snappishly. "I'm a robot. I don't know how drugs work ... Aha, this is what I wanted. Strongest anti-nausea meds you can get without a prescription, according to the Internet."

"I hate to be a killjoy, but the way I feel right now, I doubt if anything you give me is going to stay in me." Though he did feel a little better now that he was lying down. He might even be able to sleep a bit.

Jack brandished the package smugly. "That's why it's a dermal patch. It's absorbed through the skin."

"At least you didn't say suppository." 

The bed dipped under Jack's weight. Daniel lay sleepily while Jack bent over him and attached something small and sticky behind his ear. After the patch was in place, Jack smoothed his thumb across the skin behind Daniel's ear and along his neck.

"You're not supposed to get dehydrated. You should drink something."

Daniel gave his head a small shake. "Not right now. I kind of don't feel as awful. Don't want to tip the balance again."

Not one to be deterred by a simple refusal, Jack set a bottle of electrolyte drink on the bedside table (it had been in the box, too) and then vanished for a moment. He came back with a trash basket, which he set on Daniel's side of the bed, and a warm, damp cloth.

Daniel submitted meekly to being cleaned up a little, having his sweaty face and neck wiped down. He was drifting, drowsy, when Jack eventually climbed into bed with him and lay down behind him, spooning carefully against him.

"Are you plugged in?" Daniel asked, stirring.

"No," Jack said into his hair. "Don't really need a charge yet, I'm not that low, and I should be awake in case anything happens."

"So you're just going to lay there monitoring me. Sounds exciting."

Jack's arm settled over Daniel's rib cage, curved around to hold him. "Everything about you is fascinating to me," Jack murmured -- more honest, as always, when Daniel couldn't see his face.

"I'm sweaty and disgusting and I've been puking all evening."

He felt Jack shake his head. "Nothing about you is disgusting."

"To you, maybe not. Objectively, yes."

"Good thing disgust isn't something I'm capable of feeling, then, isn't it?"

"You know, I _really_ don't believe that." He was shivering again, wracked with another wave of cold chills. Dammit, he was gonna _kill_ that sidewalk vendor. Or possibly stand aside while Jack killed him.

Jack's arms tightened around him.

"You're so fragile," Jack murmured. "You can't just turn off. When you turn off, you don't turn back on ..."

"I'm not dying." Even if he felt like it at the moment, but he wasn't going to say that under the current circumstances.

"I know that," Jack said brusquely. But he curled around Daniel as if some part of him, consciously or unconsciously, wanted to protect Daniel from the world. 

And Daniel gave up on resisting it. Hell, he felt the urge, too; in a world that treated Jack as a _thing,_ where the company that owned him could effectively murder him at their discretion, Daniel just wanted to wrap him up and keep him safe. He couldn't, of course, but he'd fight with every fiber of his being before he'd let anyone lay a hand on him. 

He wasn't sure if he'd entirely realized that Jack felt the same way about him.

_Of course he does, idiot. He literally had himself wiped to keep you safe._

But it took awhile to internalize the knowledge that someone loved him that much. Especially when that someone was prickly, defensive, and hadn't had a whole lot of experience at dealing with emotions, his own or anyone else's.

Daniel curled his fingers over Jack's warmer ones. "Sorry I scared you," he murmured.

"Don't know what you're talking about." But Jack held him, and went on holding him, until he fell asleep.


End file.
